85. Handle with care

Body image, never being enough and reminiscing over my past selves.

I hate people taking photos of me, I get stiff, I pull weird faces, I forcefully smile and then I always delete all of the images taken because I can’t stand to look at my ugly self. C on the other hand takes photos of me and then never deletes them because he likes them so I forget about their existence until I come across them years later, like now.

I was sitting down to write my initial idea on C’s Mac because mine broke last week and I saw a folder on his desktop called “EM AND ME 2021” so of course, I opened it and found some photos he took of me when we lived in Barcelona. I don’t remember them being taken or ever having seen them before, but I was surprised because my reaction was completely different to when I take a photo nowadays and instantly delete it seconds later. Instead of analyzing my face, my freckles, my eyes, my smile, the shape of my face and checking for a double chin, I just saw a younger version of Emily who lived in a very big city and carried a very different life. I saw a younger version of myself and I felt a sudden warmth inside. I don’t look exactly the same as I did then: I look a little bit older, a little less like a kid. My expression isn’t the same and this current Emily from the future looking back on that 2021 version of myself felt like going back in time and giving her a hug.

From this future point I’m able to see my past self with more distance. I remember wearing those green Champion shorts from Urban Outfitters in the photo to go to acupuncture every week because I was ill, I remember working all day to pay our bills, I remember walking +10.000 steps every Saturday and Sunday to make up for not getting out during the week from having to work, I remember losing 10kg in two months and my period disappearing, I remember a lot of things that in that moment weren’t visible. When I see myself in that photo I feel like giving myself a hug and begging that younger Emily to stop wanting to be skinnier, to be prettier, to want to always physically “better”. I want to tell her to look in the mirror and see a young, strong and capable Emily that was battling a lot of demons and that eventually she’d succeed.

There were other folders too. The next photos I saw were in one called “50mm test”. One of them was me sat on our terrace wearing jeans, a black t-shirt and Wallabees because C wanted to try out his new camera lens. I was just sat there, no specific pose in mind, no smile, nothing. Just me looking at C as he takes the photo to then resume our conversation. I see me but I don’t. I recognize myself because I know that indeed that’s what I look like, but I feel compassion for that person in the photo. I see a pretty Emily. I see a cute Emily. I look at her as if she weren’t me. I look at her as if she were some stranger on Instagram that I think is cool, but when I look in the mirror now, I don’t see that. I can’t help but look at these old pictures and think “oh, you were pretty after all”.

After all the shit you gave yourself every time you saw your reflection in a mirror, after all the zooming in on photos to find every flaw, you were pretty after all. But you needed to see yourself in 2023 to think that you were pretty in 2021.

I become interested in these unseen photos C has of me on his Mac. I search for more photos of myself in other folders and I come across some of when we lived in Málaga back in 2020. I open up the folder and see a photo of me lying on the grass in a grey t-shirt and a pastel yellow skirt. C was taking photos of me wearing one of the t-shirts he’d designed and printed for his clothing brand’s new collection. I was always the first person to get to wear the new clothes, but I was also his first model. He was constantly taking photos of me and I was always raging with anxiety because of being photographed. He always had my consent and in reality, a part of me liked it. But the part of me that would pick myself apart finding flaw after flaw couldn’t handle it. There were too many factors out of my control like people seeing the photos and thinking that I was ugly. Now, in 2023, I look at these photos from a complete different part of the country with a complete different life and again, see an Emily that wasn’t what I thought she was back then. All of the ideas I’d feed myself about my image weren’t true, but in that moment they were. Now, I look at myself and want to give this even younger version of myself a hug. Here I remember my mental health being really bad: I decided to stop studying at university, the pandemic had just finished, we’d just moved house after a really stressful experience in the previous flat, my stress was through the roof and I was literally living in fight or flight mode. A lot of really hard stuff happened in that period and again, with distance I’m able to see it all and filter through it all from a position of love and compassion which at the time didn’t exist.

Every single day I still do the skin analyzing, the body analyzing, the weight analyzing and there’s very few days in which I truly believe I look good or that I’m pretty enough. Why do I need to dislike the current version of myself but then love the versions of myself that don’t exist anymore? Why do I always need to get rid of all of my freckles to look like when I was younger and had whiter skin? The reason I had whiter skin was because I spent a lot less time in the sun because I was indoors working all day; is that what I want to be prettier? Why do I want to want to be skinnier to like myself more? The reason I was so skinny in Barcelona was because I was so stressed that all I had were bones; is that what it takes for me to like myself?

I see beauty in so many people. I admire their special unique features but I can’t do that with my own? Why are rounder, smaller and more disperse freckles better than mine? Because mine are a different shape and I have more of them? Why are other people always better dressed in my mind when in reality we’re wearing almost the same outfits? Because it’s someone else’s? Why do I think that someone else is beautiful because they have fair skin but when I see that my skin is that same shade I think I look terrible because I’m not tanned enough?

I feel emotional seeing these photos and coming to this realization because I’m realizing that I have a lot of work to do. I have a very strong inner narrative that needs to be fed with new ideas and an updated criteria. I can’t let time and life pass by disliking myself, thinking I’m not enough and seeing myself with such harmful filters on my own eyes. I need to work on loving myself in the present moment, each day, because those versions I see of myself in photos no longer exist and I can never get her back. I can’t wait to see myself in random photos from 2-3 years ago to finally approve of what I was.

I know perfectly that life changes and that feelings fluctuate so maybe the next lesson is to learn that my body does the same. No two months are going to be the same and my body isn’t going to be the same month after month because life is always changing. That can be beautiful too.

Flowers don’t always stand up straight with perfectly clean and vibrant petals, they change each day depending on the humidity of the soil, the sunlight, the wind, the temperature, if insects have been at them… but I always think that they’re magical beings and beautiful no matter what. Maybe next time I look in the mirror I should think of a flower. Maybe that way I’ll be a little more gentle.

❤️‍🩹 COOL STUFF

This week I’d like to talk about the book club I organise.

Every month we read a book at our own pace and meet up at the end of the month via Google Meets for 1 hour to talk about what books, series or films we’ve been enjoying throughout the month and then talk about our opinions regarding the monthly book. We tend to read books that are available in Spanish and also in English so that it’s not limited to one language (although in the meeting we speak in Spanish).

The Book Club is a very special project for me because it was born with intention of becoming a safe space for fellow book lovers to share a common passion 📖 and to meet new people with similar interests and well, the result has by far exceeded any of my initial ideas resulting in a beautiful experience, with wonderful people, I hope to continue for as long as possible.

If this experience is something you’d like to take part in, you can look at the Book Club’s Instagram page to see the archive of book’s we’ve read and to also get in contact.

Thank you for being here and taking the time to read POMELO.

See you next week,
EMILY x